Cover Lissoni’s Borea sunbeds for B&B Italia sport a graceful balance of oval forms
Lissoni’s Borea sunbeds for B&B Italia sport a graceful balance of oval forms
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Known for his curiosity and experimental approach, Italian architect and designer Piero Lissoni shares his perspective on how to avoid banal design
According to Piero Lissoni, curiosity did not kill the cat. “It’s absolutely not true; banality killed the cat,” asserts the Italian architect and designer in all earnestness. It is an early October morning, and we are in the Space Furniture Asia showroom surrounded by furniture from B&B Italia, for whom Lissoni became creative director in 2021. He is in Singapore as part of celebratory festivities to mark the 30th anniversary of Space Furniture, an Australian-headquartered purveyor of luxury furniture.
The Italian architect and designer’s revision of the famous proverb was meant to make a point about the need to reject tried-and-tested formulas. His repudiation of banality has made him a key figure in contemporary Italian design. Aside from B&B Italia, his noteworthy body of work includes furniture designs for top brands such as Living Divani and Glas Italia, among others; these brands are carried exclusively in Singapore by Space Furniture. Lissoni is also the creative director of many other brands including Boffi, where he modernised kitchen design through clever reinvention.
Based on his assertion, curiosity is something to be celebrated rather than restrained. “You need to be curious every day. The collateral effect of curiosity is generosity; you can give because you know more,” explains Lissoni on how only the informed can rewrite the rules of design.
It’s a trait that he has honed over decades since childhood, where he was the quintessential questioning kid. “For example, my parents would tell me: ‘Piero, you need to drink the glass of milk now.’ I would question why because it was interesting for me to discover the reasons. All my life is connected to this simple word: why.”
Read more: Gabriel Tan creates his first collection with B&B Italia
Above The B&B Italia Dock sofa offers various accessories that enable many customisable options
The B&B Italia Dock sofa offers various accessories that enable many customisable options
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The tall and debonair Lissoni is forthcoming, but not garrulous. While he speaks in soft tones, he also makes no qualms about asserting his points. Lissoni’s designs are not dissimilar. They are minimal yet strong, refined yet unstuffy. They whisper rather than shout, and as they say, the devil is in the details. It’s evident in how a slight shift in proportion changes the way one sits; or how seamless joints can create pure, unadulterated forms.
“In my work, I try to combine something gentle with something completely ‘wrong,’” Lissoni remarks. For example, for B&B Italia, the new Dambo sofa has all the functions of a modular collection, but some hexagonal modules enable more geometric configurations. The atrium of the newly opened Hotel AKA Nomad in New York is another fine example, where a bronze spiral staircase ribbons down the atrium, lending a dose of glitz to the rugged quietude of the old whitewashed brick walls.
See also: Piero Lissoni designs Sanlorenzo's Singapore showroom
Above The Borea outdoor tables demonstrate Lissoni’s elegant design code
Above The B&B Italia Mjna chair
The Borea outdoor tables demonstrate Lissoni’s elegant design code
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The staircase is a favourite spatial element of Lissoni’s to express material, form or emotion. “It is for me to highlight a special zone. When you move up or down, you disappear into another space,” he says of the staircase’s rich spatial potential. These sculptural vertical corridors are found even in the luxury yachts he has designed for Sanlorenzo—for whom Lissoni is also the creative director—making them feel like small apartments.
Says Lissoni: “I hate the idea that when you’re in a boat, the spaces are divided into many small cabins with no furniture inside, so I design boats as floating villas. I like to think that when you are inside, space is the real luxury. I use more or less the same consciousness as designing houses; when you are in a large, beautiful living room, you can look across to the library or into the dining room.”
Above The B&B Italia Nooch sofa by Piero Lissoni was named after Thailand’s Nong Nooch Garden
The B&B Italia Nooch sofa by Piero Lissoni was named after Thailand’s Nong Nooch Garden
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On what he hopes to achieve in his role as creative director of B&B Italia, Lissoni wishes to revive the brand’s progressive attitude. “When B&B Italia (then C&B Italia) was born in 1965, it was to be a factory for contemporary design. Over the years, little by little, she has become too bourgeoisie,” he laments.
Recently, Lissoni started to work with a new crop of designers, one of them being Singaporean-born, Porto-based Gabriel Tan, who released the Quiet Lines collection earlier this year. Lissoni also streamlined the colours and material choices for the furniture to give the brand a more distinct identity.
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Above The brand’s Planck coffee tables feature a shape that subtly widens from the top to the base
The brand’s Planck coffee tables feature a shape that subtly widens from the top to the base
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In terms of colours, the showrooms were globally unified with shades of grey. “I like grey because it allows for the best level of control of light inside. Look now, the daylight has come into the shop and the colours in the showroom are gentle, not banal,” highlights Lissoni, pointing at a wall where the grey paint softens the structure.
Not least, Lissoni also started to display furniture differently to suggest a holistic B&B Italia family of products rather than highlighting individual designers. “Before, in showrooms all around the world, Patricia Urquiola’s pieces were grouped with Patricia Urquiola’s pieces; Antonio Citterio’s pieces all with Antonio Citterio’s pieces. Now, I mix and match all of them,” says Lissoni.
Above Italian designer Piero Lissoni
Italian designer Piero Lissoni
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He adds, looking around us: “You see here shelves designed by Michael Anastassiades, a chair designed by me, a side table designed by Naoto Fukasawa, and this sofa we are sitting on by Patricia Urquiola. We start now to show our capacity to design contemporary ambiences, and at the same time ‘contamination.’ Contamination is our new word; I think it means a modern attitude to be different.”
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Credits
Images: Lissoni Associati, respective brands and Space Furniture
